Lack of observation is major factor in UK road accidents

‘Failure to look properly’ combined with a ‘failure to judge another person’s path or speed’ were responsible for 13,299 accidents

Accident statistics for Britain show overall casualties have risen

Number of those killed or seriously injured in Britain increased by five per cent to 24,582

The Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has identified that once again ‘failure to look properly’ is the most common contributory factor in more than 30,000 vehicle accidents a year.

These figure were released following a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Transport.

Police can record up to six contributory factors from a list of 77 for each incident to explain why they think a crash took place but the top two give the most obvious reasons for the incident.

Analysis of the 2013 contributory factor combinations shows that top of the list was ‘failure to look properly’ combined with a ‘failure to judge another person’s path or speed’.

These two together were responsible for 13,299 accidents, or seven per cent of the total number.

Next up was ‘failure to look properly’ combined with ‘carelessness or recklessness’, or ‘judged to be in a hurry’. These totalled 9,132 accidents, or five per cent of the total.

Other reasons to emerge from the data were more than 3,000 accidents caused by ’slippery roads due to weather conditions’ combined with ‘loss of vehicle control’ and 1,470 accidents caused by ‘excessive speed’ combined with’ losing control of the vehicle’.

Failure to look appears twice more in the top 20 with ‘aggressive driving’ combined with ‘carelessness or recklessness’, or ‘judged to be in a hurry’ bottom of the list.